Posthuman Alternatives in the Ontological Understanding of Photography

Photographic materiality refers to a way of conceiving photographic artifacts as a concrete material arrange ment. Gelatin, silver, different organic and inorganic compounds, like the baryte, and the vegetable fibers and plastics, that are part of the supports of printing, constitute the material configuration of these objects. This article will argue that awareness to the material dimension of photographs allows to formulate a post human understanding of these artifacts that challen ges the well-known indexical and socio-cultural onto logies of the medium. From this perspective, photo graphic materialism constitutes a theory of the /bet ween/, considering photographic objects as constitu ted by a relational ontological category. Focusing on the more-than-human agencies in photography actively challenges humanistic and anthropocentric considerations of photographic theory